About AKEthnoGirl

I've been the Collections Manager of Ethnology & History at the University of Alaska Museum of the North since 1999. I worked as a graduate student in the department for three years prior to that. I grew up in Iowa, but moved to Alaska the day after I graduated from the University of Iowa in 1994, having spent the past 3 summers working for my Aunt & Uncle at beautiful Portage Glacier Lodge.
I'm completely in love with my life in Alaska, which includes my husband and son and two dogs and my 14-sided-house, as well as my job, which takes me to interesting places where I meet amazing people who share incredible stories with me about all kinds of things.
I hope to share some of the exciting things I love about my job, being the caretaker of a 16,000 object collection of Alaskan cultural heritage, and an active member of a number of Museum and Anthropology professional organizations.

After an exhibit is installed, one might think that the work of the guest curator is done. More often than not, this isn’t the case. The curator will continue to work with the museum’s education and public programs staff to … Continue reading →

Most people have no idea how museums put exhibits together. At UAMN, we’ve developed a process that, while slightly different with each exhibit, follows a basic structure of using a guest curator (myself, in the case of Denali Legacy) along with a … Continue reading →

When you take on the role of a guest curator, you never know what sort of new ideas you’ll discover. You make the pitch, about how your interpretation of a story is going to be “new” and “different,” and how … Continue reading →